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Cryptocurrency prices moved higher on Tuesday after Hong Kong’s securities regulator announced it will allow retail trading of certain crypto assets starting June 1.

Bitcoin rose 1.7% to $27,293.64, according to Coin Metrics. The largest cryptocurrency has been trading in a small range throughout May, struggling to break meaningfully above $30,000 but staying above $25,000. Ether advanced nearly 2% to $1,851.91.

Late Monday night, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission said it would allow retail investors to trade certain crypto assets beginning next month on registered trading platforms. The move was widely expected, with the announcement marking the end of a request for public comment it put out in February on its proposed regulatory requirements around retail trading in crypto.

The new guidelines are part of a broader effort of Hong Kong’s to become a global crypto hub. That ambition is in sharp contrast with China, which banned crypto trading in 2021, as well as the U.S. where the regulatory stance toward crypto has turned hostile since the collapse of FTX.

“This news doesn’t mean that a flood of retail buying power will enter the market at the beginning of June. … We could see some volume uptick in June, however,” said Noelle Acheson, economist and author of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter.

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission has already licensed two digital asset platforms, OSL and Hash Blockchain, and it’s likely some are already actively trading offshore, Acheson said.

Owen Lau, an analyst at Oppenheimer, called Hong Kong “pretty aggressive” for trying to become a crypto hub.

“It will continue to capture the attention of the community and attract more firms to set up offices in Hong Kong,” he said. “It is hard to gauge the exact impact but it has a long-term effect on capital flow and talent movement.”

Both crypto assets have struggled to make meaningful moves in either direction in May. While the market has been lacking in big catalysts and investors are closely watching the debt ceiling negotiations, trading has been relatively still and bitcoin has returned to behaving like a risk asset.

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Asian tech stocks fall as Trump doubles down on tariffs, keeping investors on edge

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Asian tech stocks fall as Trump doubles down on tariffs, keeping investors on edge

Employees move semiconductor testers on the assembly line of the Advantest Corp. plant in Ora, Japan on Aug. 10, 2012.

Tomohiro Ohsumi | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Asian tech and chip-related stocks fell Tuesday after U.S. President Donald Trump made it clear that tariffs on Mexico and Canada would go into effect as planned.

Trump said the U.S. would impose 25% tariffs on goods imported from Canada and Mexico, adding that there was “no room left for Mexico or for Canada” to negotiate an alternative to the tariffs.

Trump also said he would impose an additional 10% tariff on imports from China, having already levied 10% duties that came into effect in February.

Asian tech stocks were also pressured by the near 9% fall in artificial intelligence darling Nvidia‘s shares overnight.

Japanese semiconductor equipment maker Advantest plunged as much as 9%, to its lowest level since last October, while Chipmaker Renesas Electronics lost 6.35%.

Tech investor SoftBank Group dropped 6.25%. The company’s CEO Masayoshi Son plans to borrow $16 billion to invest in artificial intelligence, according to a news report that came out over the weekend.

Over in South Korea, shares in SK Hynix lost as much as 3.26%, while Samsung Electronics bucked the trend to rise nearly 1% following the launch of its Galaxy A series smartphones with AI-powered features.

Chinese AI-linked stocks also fell with Alibaba and Kingsoft Cloud down as much as 2.23% and 8.46% respectively.

Meanwhile, shopping platform Meituan lost 0.62%, electronic vehicle maker BYD plunged 6.60%, Xpeng traded 1.97% lower and Li Auto lost 2.68%.

Chinese tech major Tencent‘s shares were trading 0.91% higher in Hong Kong.

In Taiwan, shares in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company lost more than 2% Tuesday, after Trump said the company would invest $100 billion in the U.S. to bolster chip manufacturing. The investment was a “tremendous move by the most powerful company in the world,” Trump said.

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Malaysia will take ‘necessary action’ if its companies are involved in Nvidia fraud case: Trade minister

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Malaysia will take 'necessary action' if its companies are involved in Nvidia fraud case: Trade minister

Nvidia’s headquarters on Feb. 26, 2025, in Santa Clara, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Malaysia said it will take “necessary action” against Malaysian companies if they are found to be involved in a fraud case linked to the alleged movement of Nvidia chips from Singapore to China.

That comes after Singapore Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam reportedly said on Monday that the servers in the fraud case may have contained Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips which were then sent to Malaysia.

On Feb. 27, Singapore charged three men with fraud, with local broadcaster CNA saying it understood the cases are linked to the alleged movement of Nvidia chips.

“The question is whether Malaysia was a final destination or from Malaysia, it went to somewhere else, which we do not know for certain at this point,” Shanmugam told reporters.

Malaysia checking with data center companies if chips have 'gone to the right parties': Minister

Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Tuesday, Tengku Zafrul Aziz, Malaysia’s minister for investment, trade and industry said the country has no information that data center companies operating in Malaysia are “not using the chips that they are supposed to be using.”

He said such servers are imported by data center companies such as Microsoft, AWS and Google.

Singapore’s Shanmugam had said Nvidia’s chips were embedded in servers supplied by Dell and Supermicro to Singapore-based companies, before they went to Malaysia. He added that “there may have been false representation on the final destination of the servers.”

When asked if Malaysia knew where the servers were now, Zafrul replied, “we don’t know,” adding that Malaysian authorities are discussing with the data center companies and checking if they have gone to the right parties.

“Right now, there’s no such cases in Malaysia to date, and we are investigating if they are. We’ll definitely discuss this with Singapore and well, the companies would then have to be held accountable by the relevant authorities,” he added.

CNA also reported two Singaporeans were charged with criminal conspiracy to commit fraud on a supplier of servers.

Citing charge sheets, CNA said they allegedly made false representations in 2024 that the items would not be transferred to a person other than the “authorized ultimate consignee of end users.”

The charges also come after Reuters reported in late January that the U.S. Commerce Department is looking into whether Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has been using U.S. chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China.

Citing a person familiar with the matter, Reuters said “organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of countries including Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.”

Zafrul told CNBC that Malaysia will be checking the chips’ destination, but added, “what I can say today [is] the chips are not meant to be in Malaysia in the first place. So the question is, why is it going out of Singapore?”

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23andMe special committee again rejects CEO Wojcicki’s take-private offer

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23andMe special committee again rejects CEO Wojcicki's take-private offer

Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and chief executive officer of 23andme Inc., during the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, US, on Friday, March 10, 2023. 

Jordan Vonderhaar | Bloomberg | Getty Images

23andMe‘s special committee of independent directors on Monday rejected CEO Anne Wojcicki’s proposal to take the distressed genetic testing company private.

Wojcicki submitted a proposal to the committee on Sunday, offering to acquire all of the company’s outstanding shares for 41 cents each, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The stock plunged 33% on Monday to close at $1.47, down more than 99% from its peak in 2021.

Wojcicki and New Mountain Capital submitted a prior bid in February to take the company private for $2.53 per share. Days later, New Mountain told Wojcicki it was no longer interested in participating in a potential acquisition and would discontinue discussions, the filing said.

23andMe’s special committee said that Wojcicki’s proposal represented an 84% decrease from the prior offer and determined not to go forward, according to a release on Monday.

“The Special Committee has reviewed Ms. Wojcicki’s acquisition proposal in consultation with its financial and legal advisors, and has unanimously determined to reject the proposal,” the directors said.

23andMe didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Following a turbulent 2024, 23andMe announced plans in January to explore strategic alternatives, which could include a sale of the company or its assets, a restructuring or a business combination. 

Wojcicki previously submitted a proposal to take the company private for 40 cents per share in July, but it was rejected by the special committee, in part because the members said it lacked committed financing and did not provide a premium to the closing price at the time.

WATCH: The rise and fall of 23andMe

The rise and fall of 23andMe

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